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Story: Otago places

Building the Roxburgh dam

The Roxburgh dam was the first major dam and power station project in the South Island after the Second World War. Construction started in 1949; this video shows the site, where the Clutha River/Mata-Au emerges from the Roxburgh Gorge, in the first months of the project.

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Archives New Zealand - Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga

Reference: Power Progress. National Film Unit, 1951

Permission of Archives New Zealand Te Rua Mahara o te Kāwanatanga must be obtained before any re-use of this material.

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How to cite this page

Malcolm McKinnon, Otago places – Clutha River/Mata-Au, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/video/22793/building-the-roxburgh-dam (accessed 7 June 2026).

Story by Malcolm McKinnon, published 19 August 2009, updated 1 July 2015.

Comments

Marion Blondell
24 October 2022
My paternal aunt who was born in 1911 went to Teachers college in Dunedin to train as a primary school teacher after she matriculated at secondary school she went to Teachers College in Dunedin to train as a primary school teacher. After that she was sent to Fruitlands in Central Otago New Zealand to do her mandatory country teaching. While there she told us (her nieces ) the Roxburgh hydro dam was being built and the workers lived in tents there with their families through the winter. My aunt informed us the children went to school there. There was a potbelly stove in the school and soup was cooked on it for the children’s lunch to ensure they had one hot food to eat each day. This has been refuted by two people on Facebook and I would love to discover that this is true.